Category: creative non-fiction

A few years ago, I was driving back from a workshop I taught on how to do art with kids with disabilities in Temple, Texas. It was a beautiful, big-skied, sunny afternoon, and I was looking forward to the drive. I was stopped at an intersection about to get on I-35 back to Austin, and… Continue reading Sometimes Abortion Saves

Lately I have been remembering a project I was involved with years ago, bringing improvisational theatre activities into a female juvenile detention center in Cleveland Ohio. It was an experience which troubled me then, and continues to trouble me today. It might be because I just read an academic article about a theatre project that… Continue reading The Gang Girls of Cleveland

The house next door was torn down last week. It took two hours, executed by a single excavator with a demolition claw. We could see lamps and carpet in the rubble. The house had been there sixty years, a 1950’s postwar starter home, ranch style with a slab base. Nothing special. Except it happens to be… Continue reading Too Close To Home

This month, the Vatican reprimanded a group of U.S. nuns proclaiming after four years of investigation that the group had “serious doctrinal problems.” Anyone who has been watching politics in relationship to the Catholic Church might have seen this coming, even before the Obama healthcare program. For me, it’s been a troubling case of the political becoming the… Continue reading I’m With the Nuns

A few years ago, a fellow came to work with my team who grew up in Iran. He wasn’t very tall, but he was dark and handsome. He had features like many Southern Europeans—Spanish or Italian or Greek or French—narrow nose, strong brow, sculpted jawline, brown eyes. His hair was silver when we met, wavy… Continue reading Persian Lessons: Heartache for Iran

“…My salad days,  When I was green in judgment, cold in blood…” In June, I graduated with my degree in Acting from a prestigious conservatory school in NYC.  I had auditioned for agents and got called back by ABC, NBC, and the Philadelphia Playhouse.  I wasn’t very into TV, so I negotiated with the Philadelphia… Continue reading When I Played Cleopatra

Many years ago, I went to see Kurt Vonnegut speak in a huge auditorium.  He was articulate but distant. Oh, how I loved those books as a teen, Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five and the whole lot of ‘em. They were a secret kind of knowledge about the world, the way it really was, not… Continue reading Ignoring Kurt Vonnegut

A few weeks before my father passed away, only days after he had entered the best nursing home our limited budget could muster, I went to visit him, and something was wrong.  Very wrong.  He wasn’t there.  I mean, his body was there, but HE wasn’t. He had been diagnosed with advanced cirrhosis of the… Continue reading Bringing Back Dad’s Spirit

We are in the middle of renovating our kitchen.  I should be in heaven.  I am in hell.  I should be grateful that we are able to take on such an endeavor in this economy.  Instead, I am questioning my marriage and the meaning of home and the symbolism of a kitchen for the well-spring… Continue reading Renovations

I want to be drunker than I am. I went to an American national neighborhood night out tonight, and heard all the gossip about the people that live near me.  The people who have lived around me for 1 or 20 years. I heard about the people who won’t speak to each other over a… Continue reading Terrible Truths of National Night Out

I am troubled right now about the predominance in my life of smart, sensitive men whose company I otherwise enjoy, but who suddenly spurt out sexist remarks in the middle of pleasant and entertaining conversation. This happens, for the most part, at social and informal moments in my workplace or community settings, like with my… Continue reading Smart, Sensitive Sexists

As an armchair cosmologist, I can’t help but meditate on the recent news that scientists for the first time have witnessed, via satellite, the radiation signature of a star being pulled apart and “swallowed” by a supermassive black hole. Image: Wikipedia This poor star, which is reported to be much like our own sun, drifted… Continue reading Beware the Hungry Black Holes

Seven days from now, my marriage will be “convalidated” by the Catholic Church.  My son is getting baptized…something that regular Catholics usually do at infancy.  But we aren’t regular Catholics.  In fact, I am not sure I’m a Catholic at all. My husband is Catholic.  Former altar boy, Catholic school, and the whole nine yards. … Continue reading Slouching towards Catholicism

One of my core values is a belief in the necessity, integrity, and joy of creative expression, for everyone.  I believe that everyone is creative, although some people truly excel at it, and can create master works of art, and they should be duly recognized for it.  It would be great to live in a… Continue reading Life After The Arts

I believe in one God,the Father almighty, (Universal Consciousness)maker of heaven and earth,  (Plants, animals, and all inanimate matter)of all things visible and invisible. (The universe, known and unknown, particularly advancing now here on Earth with the help of Hubble Space Telescope and Particle Physics)I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,  (The person(s) who helped… Continue reading Nicene Creed As I Now Understand It

People have been eating and drinking and doing unusual things to alter their perception for as long as we can tell.  What is this drive to want to get inside, or outside, of us, to alter our sense of reality? I loved the 1980 movie “Altered States.”  Cable TV and movie channels were new, and… Continue reading Altered States: Not just a movie anymore